Review Roundup: Samsung Galaxy S 4

The reviews for Samsung’s flagship Android smartphone, the Galaxy S 4, are coming in — and they aren’t as earth-shattering as you might expect, given the immense hype around the phone.

Instead, it seems Samsung’s phone has suffered a fate similar to what some Web critics ascribe to Apple: evolutionary, not revolutionary. The build is similar to the S 3, the performance is a huge step up, but there isn’t that wow feature that many were hoping to see.

Instead, according to tech reviewers around the web, the features Samsung packed into the S 4 are almost like technology in search of an application, with many opting to just use it as they normally do a phone.

More importantly, it seems the HTC One, the flagship Android phone from HTC, bests the S 4 in some categories, including camera and build.

Here’s what reviewers around the web are saying:

Build

One of the harshest criticisms of the Galaxy S 4 is the build of the device. While other modern smartphones are a mix of glass, aluminum and other durable materials, the Galaxy S 4 is decidedly plastic and more flimsy, according to some reviewers.

“It almost feels cheap by comparison,” Business Insider’s Steve Kovach writes. “The entire phone is covered in creaky plastic, not solid metal and glass. Just take off the flimsy back cover and you’ll see what I’m talking about. It almost bends in half. Whereas the iPhone and HTC One designs scream quality, the Galaxy S4 design feels at least two years behind. It looks nearly identical to last year’s Galaxy S III, with only a few minor tweaks.”

That doesn’t bode well for a device that you might want to show off to your coworkers, The New York Times’ David Pogue writes. “The S4 is still made of plastic — lightweight and grippy, but not as classy as the iPhone’s glass or the HTC One’s metal. All told, nobody at the office will notice that you’ve bought the latest and greatest.”

The camera also falls behind the competition, most notably the HTC One, according to Engadget’s Brad Molen. He writes: “On paper, the specs indicate a pretty solid setup for a flagship, but performance doesn’t always match up with the specs — especially now that we’ve used the One extensively and found it to be a bar-raiser in terms of its low-light results.”

Features

Samsung spent the better half of an hour-long campy Broadway-style presentation showing all the new software features of the Galaxy S 4. Among them: a translation app, a car navigator, and the ability to preview things on the phone by hovering your hand over phone, rather than touching it.

It sounds like it’s from the future, right? The problem is, according to some tech reviewers, that they all feel kind of gimmicky.

Pogue writes: ”Most of the other changes in the S4 are software features. More than ever, Samsung’s design approach this time was, “Throw everything in and see what sticks.” There was absolutely no filter. There’s also no consistency, coordination or unified direction; it’s just a big, rattling cargo bay crammed with features… Here’s a twist for you: The best new S4 feature is one that hides most of them. It’s Easy Mode, and it will make a lot of people very happy.”

The Verge’s David Pierce pretty much echos the same complaints. He writes, “much of what Samsung offers seems to be just for show, designed to give sales clerks something to demo that makes the GS4 unique. The best features get out of your way, but too many are simply obtrusive — I wound up using the GS4 like I would any other phone, with most of the additional features off, and as much as I’d be thrilled to watch people waving at their phones on the subway, I’m not betting it catches on.”

But still, you have the ability to turn on and off certain features, making the phone highly customizable, Kovach writes. “Some of them are useful, some of them don’t work properly, and some of them are just plain gimmicky. But that’s also part of what makes the Galaxy S4 an appealing phone –– it’s versatile and completely customizable, able to adapt to your needs whether you’re a smartphone pro or a novice. All those extras are there if you want them, yet hidden if you don’t.”

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Performance

The phone is packed with the latest new hardware, and it certainly shows.

AllThingsD’s Walt Mossberg writes, “on many key hardware specs, the Galaxy S 4 shines. Its screen and camera resolution beat the iPhone 5’s and I found its pictures to be slightly better than those from the Apple phone, which is nearly a year old. Its removable battery gave me a full day of use.”

The battery is also a big plus, and lasts longer than competing smartphones — particularly the HTC One, Pierce writes. “My biggest frustration with the HTC One has always been its battery. It’ll last a day, but only with a bit of hand-holding. If that’s lower-middle class, I’d say the Galaxy S4 is upper-middle class: it lasts a full day almost no matter how I use it (unless I stream HD Netflix videos constantly, in which case it dies in about five hours), and will even get me to the morning if I forget to plug it in.”

There’s a dark side to the huge array of features in the Galaxy S 4, too — they have an impact on the performance of the otherwise zippy smartphone. Molen writes, “in general, the GS 4 performs amazingly well, but there’s a catch: when Air View and Air Gestures were enabled, we noticed the phone acting a little sluggish even in the most basic of tasks. It would complete those tasks every time, but we couldn’t help but notice some stuttering. This seems to indicate that Sammy’s razzle-dazzle features are processor hogs and aren’t worth enabling unless you use them on a frequent basis (as unlikely as that may seem).”

The Bottom Line

Steve Kovach, Business Insider: “Make no mistake about it, the Galaxy S4 is a great phone, and easily one of the best you can buy right now. You get an amazing Android experience on a big, beautiful display. As long as you don’t mind a bunch of plastic, you’ll be perfectly happy with the Galaxy S4. But is it the best phone? No. You’re still much better off with the iPhone 5 or the HTC One if you like Android.”

David Pierce, The Verge: “I ended my HTC One review by saying there were two Android phones worth buying, the One and the Nexus 4. That number is now very clearly three, but I had hoped against hope that Samsung would emerge the undisputed winner. The Galaxy S4 is a very good phone in most respects — it has a stellar camera and solid battery life, blistering performance and an impressively useful complement of software features. It’s a technological achievement — there’s no question about that.”

David Pogue, The New York Times: “And here’s the funny thing: Now Samsung is starting to play it safe. The Galaxy is still a beautiful, high-horsepower Android phone. But basically, it’s an updated Galaxy S3. If this were Apple, who adds the letter S to denote a slightly upgraded model (“iPhone 4S,” for example), Samsung might have called this phone the Galaxy S3S.

Walt Mossberg, AllThingsD: “It’s an evolution of the prior model and despite some improvements, it still is especially weak in the software Samsung adds to basic Android. I found Samsung’s software often gimmicky, duplicative of standard Android apps, or, in some cases, only intermittently functional.”

Brad Molen, Engadget: “All told, both phones have different strengths and weaknesses, so one handset unfortunately won’t fit all. But when we compare it to the eye-catching look and feel of the One, we can’t help but think of one word to describe Samsung’s particular flagship entry: predictable.”